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Leafs General Manager Brian Burke and his youngest sonís body arrived in Massachusetts while the team was trouncing the Ottawa Senators in Toronto.

"We pulled some strings," son Patrick told The Toronto Sun, as the family prepared for a funeral Tuesday, which is expected to fill a church with up to 1,000 seats.

"We picked up Brendan and Brian," he said, after Toronto Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment arranged Saturday for a private jet to bring the accident victim to the family. Brendan Burke and a friend were killed in a traffic mishap Friday on a snow-whipped Indiana highway.

A funeral mass for the 21-year-old university senior and Redhawks hockey team student manager will be at St. John the Evangelist Church, in the Boston suburb of Canton, Mass.

"We're anticipating a large number of people," said Brian Fitzgerald, owner of the Dockray & Thomas Funeral home. "The phone hasn't stopped ringing.

"The family is very well known in our town," which has 21,000 residents, Fitzgerald added. "All the children went to school here.

"I've known Brendan since he was a kid," he said. "It's tough."

Molly Burke, 18, said her brother made friends "within minutes of meeting someone, even the gruffest. There was something so endearing about him.

"Passionate about hockey" and the game's statistics, she said he could also play pickup games "with anyone he met within five minutes."